Jory Strong - Ghostland

He couldn’t pinpoint the moment his resolve had weakened. Was it her offer to share her food? Was it the instant she’d bravely faced him and their eyes met as his talons danced over her jugular and her terror beat against his palm?

He was no longer sure he could kill her, and yet he knew with certainty an assassin from the House of the Scorpion would be sent if he returned to the Kingdom of the Djinn and she remained alive. A human who could summon a Djinn was a threat to all of them.

Zurael rolled his shoulders and shrugged the thoughts aside. There was little point in thinking of the future and his part in it. For the moment Aisling was bait for a more dangerous prey.

His eyes followed her when she gracefully sat on a bed of packed earth at the center of the room. When she folded her legs and ducked her head, he couldn’t look away from the delicate curve of her neck.

She pulled on a thin leather string until a small pouch emerged from underneath her shirt. Zurael stepped farther into the fetish-guarded room when she opened the pouch and dumped a dozen tiny carvings into her hand before scattering them onto the dirt.

Bone fetishes gleamed against clay-red soil. The ferret scampered to her side. He dropped the hawk he carried in his mouth a short distance away from the collection of figures on the packed dirt.

Zurael drew closer. Uneasiness settled in his chest as he realized the ferret had been with her when she’d summoned him in her astral state.

He hadn’t remembered before. In his mind’s eye he hadn’t seen the creature, and yet as it picked up the carving of a serpent and placed it in Aisling’s hand, Zurael’s earlier memories were overlaid with fresh ones, images with Aziel draped over her shoulders as he’d been in the kitchen. He could sense nothing otherworldly about the animal, but now its presence worried him. It raised questions he couldn’t answer.

A raven fetish followed the serpent, a spider came next. Zurael’s thoughts flashed to his visit with Malahel, where a spider, a raven and a serpent had gathered around a crystalline altar as the stones were cast.

Aziel hesitated. He cocked his head as if he were listening to a voice only he could hear. When his attention returned to the scattered fetishes, he picked up a bear. Once it was placed in Aisling’s hand, he scratched the ground until the remaining carvings were in a pile.

Aisling set the four she held in her hand aside and collected the others. She returned them to the leather pouch and dropped it under her shirt.

Another step took Zurael to a wooden strip, one of four trapping the dirt into a square. Aisling’s gaze flicked nervously to his face then back to what she was doing.

He crouched but didn’t interfere as she selected the raven and stood it on the dirt. The spider followed, to the right and down, east to the raven’s north. South was marked by the serpent, west by the bear. She picked up the hawk resting in the center of the other four and set it aside.

Zurael tensed when she drew a small athame from a sheath hidden at her lower back. He cursed himself for not thinking she could be armed, even if it would be nearly impossible for her to kill him.

She connected the four fetishes with arced lines so they were bound in a circle. When she turned her palm up and he saw she intended to drag the knife’s blade over it, Zurael reacted without thought.

Fear and rage flooded him. He knocked the athame from her hand and took her to the ground with the swiftness of a pouncing cougar.

“You will not bind me,” he said.

The confusion in her face calmed him as quickly as the sight of her getting ready to make a blood offering had spurred him to strike. In place of the rage and fear came awareness, of the softness of her body beneath his, of her scent, of the hardness of his cock where it pressed against the juncture of her thighs.

She licked her lips in a nervous gesture and he wanted to cover her mouth with his own. He wanted to plunge his tongue into her heated depths and taste her essence.

Shock made him scramble off her. For the Djinn, the sharing of breath was the sharing of spirit, and he had no wish to give a piece of his soul to another-especially one of the alien god’s creations.

Aisling sat. His words reverberated through her mind. The heat of his body and a fierce awareness of his arousal lingered.

She hesitated only a second before saying, “I have no desire to bind you, and even if I wanted to, I don’t know how. I’m not a witch or a sorceress.”

Anger flashed in the demon’s eyes. She knew he was remembering her summons.

“I wouldn’t have called for you if the need wasn’t urgent. If there was another name I could have used instead, I would have.”

Her admission surprised him. His gaze traveled to the fetishes that had been scattered when he pinned her to the ground. She could see the question forming, but before he could ask it, someone knocked on the front door. The knock was followed by the sound of the door opening and a female voice calling, “Hello. Is anyone home?”

Aisling rose from the dirt and brushed herself off. Aziel darted into the living room ahead of her. Surprise held Aisling in the doorway for a second when she recognized the woman the dark priest and his followers had intended to sacrifice.

“I hope you don’t mind me coming here,” Elena said.

“I don’t mind.”

“May I have a seat? Can we talk? Or do you have a client with you?”

“Please, sit down. I can give you water or make hot tea.”

“No. I’m fine.” Elena took a chair.

Aisling sat on the couch while Aziel curled up on the second chair.

“Luther says you saved my life last night,” Elena said.

Aisling didn’t think Elena meant Father Ursu or Bishop Routledge. “Luther?”

“Luther Germaine.” Elena’s eyes widened slightly when Aisling didn’t respond. “He’s the mayor of Oakland.”

“Until yesterday I lived outside Stockton.”

Elena smiled. Her gaze traveled around the room. “That explains a lot. Someone with your ability…” Her eyes met Aisling’s. There was a fevered intensity in them. “I want to hire you to find out what happened to me last night.”

Aisling’s stomach fluttered nervously. “What do you mean?”

Movement at the corner of Aisling’s eye distracted her. Her heart rate spiked when she turned her head and saw the snake moving toward them in a mesmerizing glide of scales over wood. Its likeness to the serpent tattooed on Zurael’s arm was unmistakable.

Elena gasped and started to rise from her chair.

“It’s all right,” Aisling said automatically, though she had no idea whether it was or not. The snake was venomous, the demon as lethal in this form as in any of his others.

Golden eyes gleamed in the dusky room as Zurael closed the distance between them. With ease he found the edge of the couch and followed it with his upper body until he reached the armrest. He dipped his head to allow gravity to work in his favor as he slid down to the cushion and across to Aisling, the rest of his body following in an exotic pattern of black and gold.

Aisling’s pulse raced. Her breath shortened as Zurael’s upper body rose once again, swaying like a cobra ready to strike.

His face was only inches away from hers but she didn’t cower away from him. She refused to cringe each time he tested her.

His tongue flicked out to touch her cheek, to taste her fear and measure it. For an instant she thought she saw approval in the golden depths of his eyes when she didn’t flinch.

He coiled himself around her arm and rested his head on the back of her hand in perfect imitation of the tattoo he wore in his human form. His scales were smooth and warm against her skin, his tongue a whisper across her knuckles.